Shanghai Trip Day 6 - Lazy again...

Woke up early in the morning but didn't feel well today also. Called up office and took day off. Slept till 2 pm. Woke up with a sense of guilt as I could have gone to office if I had pushed myself a bit. Decided not to waste the day anymore. Went to the Tesco close by and bought a cheap Nokia GSM phone and local simcard. As I have a reliance CDMA phone, it wouldn't have worked in China with a local CDMA sim. The international calling is still not activated in the mobile and it should start tomorrow hopefully. Thankfully, China mobile has an English speaking operator service or it would have been a nightmare to do anything. It was so difficult asking the sales guy at Tesco about the customer care number.

I think buying the mobile has been the sole achievement of the day. I ate the rice cooked yesterday (it was still fresh). Had Aloo sabzi with it (courtesy - Gits ready to eat). The weekend is here and I have not yet finalized my travel plan. I don't know where will I go tomorrow. The places are in mind , the Shanghai Museum, the Bund and the Oriental Pearl Tower. But haven't found out how to reach there. Want to try the Metro but am not sure if it will be easy enough. Another option is to take a cab directly. I think asking the reception desk of the apartment might help.

Good thing here is the speedy internet services. I swear i had not had such fast service anywhere except IITK. Also, I was impressed with how simple is it to have a local mobile number. I just paid 50 rmb (about 350 indian rupees) and got a sim card. There was no form, no registration. Just bought it off the shelf and it was working the next moment. Fantastic !!! In india, taking a sim card is still like applying for a government license. There are forms and then there are plenty of verifications which irritate me. When I had first landed in Amritsar, I bought an airtel simcard and after a week I was asked to give an address proof. I tried explaining them that I stay in a hotel and will do so for next two months and can't have an address proof. But they weren't ready to listen. I dumped the card and took one from Hutch (now Vodafone) because one of our stockist was also a Hutch dealer. He managed to get me a postpaid connection in his name and I kept paying the bills. You see, we just find a way out in India if the rules choke us.

Well, no more of India bashing. Good thing about India is that mobiles have really become dirtcheap and I think that's an achievement in itself. I think I should read the travel guide books once more to finally decide my saturday plan so that I have some good pics to upload tomorrow.

Happy weekend to me !!!

Shanghai Trip Day 5 - shopping and cooking

Gladly, I decided to go to office today. Though I woke up late, and I had to go alone, I still managed to catch the office bus in time. It is weird talking to the cab drivers as I don't even say the name of my destination. All I do is show them the name of the destination printed in chinese to the cab driver and then pray that he does not misread the script. The technique has been working till now. Office was peaceful today. My project seems to get finalized and I should be working on it from tomorrow. Going alone in the morning raised my self-confidence and I came back from office alone too. I got off at the Grand Gateway where there are huge malls on all sides of the road. I clicked a few pics of the happening place. The malls were full of all the products. There were huge glowsigns and the most attractive thing was this huge Globe that kept chaning lights and makes the whole aura look really techno-fabulous. I started searching for all the IT stuff I had planned to buy - an i-phone, a video-ipod, a cheap gsm phone and a local sim, and some camera accessories. I somehow did not enter the right place for shopping because all the rates that were quoted were higher than those in India and the shopkeepers were ready to bargain. I bought a Canon camera bag and a lens cover for 200 RMB (about Rs. 1400/-) and felt that I paid more than required. I then kept surveying the market and realized that I was not good at bargain and was definietly being cheated. I decided not to biuy anything.

Took a taxi and came back to my apartment. Before getting in, I hopped in to the nearby Tesco supermarket to buy some rice, apples and a notebook. Cam back, called up mummy to ask how is rice prepared. It is very simple acutally. Made some rice and aaloo matar (thanks ti ITC ashirvaad ready to eat) As there was not much cooking involved, I indulged myself into the aesthetics of serving. Have a look.

The rice was little more than required and so kept the leftover in fridge hoping that it will be edible tomorrow. The taste of the ready to eat Aloo Matar did not quite match expectations and I had to use some chaat masala to make it likeable. All the tips given by Mritunjay are coming to the rescue now. Had a belly-full dinner and am feeling very sleepy.

Buying the camera accessories and the bag is making me feel very good and also that I came back alone. Maybe this weekend I shall go to see the Bund. I shall get some good pics there of the amzing architecture of modern Shanghai. I also need to finsih my shopping soon. Hopefully I should by the sim and the phone tomorrow, for sure.

Shanghai Trip Day 4 - Lazy...

Well... technically speaking... i shouldn't actually be writing anything today coz i did nothing. had slept last night after seeing some horror flick on star movies... the after effects of the movie kept me awake till late and when i finally dragged myself out of bed at 7 am, i knew something was wrong. the next moment in the bathroom i could feel myself completely worn out... legs shaking ..hands quivering and eyes still heavy with fatigue... i decided to listen to the body and it shouted...SLEEP bugger !!... well the voice was quite loud and i called up my tutor that i am not feeling well and won't be coming to office. she was kind enough to advice me to take rest... and i dropped myself on the bed like a hot potato dropping from hands... i slept...and i slept... when i woke up first...it was 11 am... i rose from the bed... and ensured that the curtains fully covered the window... i wanted complete darkness... post that went to another innings of sleep... this time woke up at 2 pm. kept lying in the bed and switching between the 4 english channels available in the TV. finally got hold of some comic flick on HBO, made maggi and had it with some Sprite and haldiram bhujia (brought from home)... thought to go out snd check out shanghai..but the sleep had made me more sleepy..came back to the bed and kept watching movies either on the TV or on the laptop for the whole day...

well... lazy days are good..they help you get back your lost energy..these are like those downhill rides where you can shut off your engines and let the body of the car cool down for the next uphill climb... spent the whole day thinking about how china is so different yet so similar to india..how rice is as important here as in india... how traditions are more important to people than progress... also kept thinking about the communist rule here but shall write those thoughts in the other blog where i pen down my socio-political thoughts...

i must go to office tomorrow or i shall die of laziness... and i must also buy myself a local simcard while coming back. the weekend plan also needs to be finally frozen and that shall require one more reading through the tarvel guide and getting the names of important places written down in chinese for cab assistance. i might also try to use the metro, in fact... till then... let's get back to sleep....

shanghai trip Day 3 - the first exposure

today was a lousy day to begin with..had to literally pull myself out of the cozy bed to get to the office. With the help of the same colleague from the building, Angie, got to the shuttle bus and reached office. the project is not yet decided and am just doing some "desk research" which means going through lots of ppt's... lot's of and understand the china market... there are several new things that i came to know about chinese.. the first that the china does not have a very uniform culture throughout and it is much like india, the north chinese are very different from south chinese, and the shanghainese are quite unlike someone from Beijing. i could understand that because Beijing being in north (and hence very cold) with political centres and its patriarchal culture stands very differently from Shanghai which is the commercial hub and has more aggressive and independent women.

one of the other interesting trivia i came to know is that chinese do not bathe in the morning like indians. they believe that bathing is needed to get rid of all the dirt and dust gathered in the day and hence they take a shower in the night before going to bed... well that's strange to me but that's how this billionly-populated country lives. about the language which is called mandarin, i guess is also not same across the country and shanghainese, for example, is different from Chinese. Mandarin does not have alphabets like English or Sanskrit which join to become words. instead, Chinese has symbols which are phonetic in nature and combine according to sounds so an English word is not directly pronounced in the same manner in chinese. almost every english word (even proper nouns) have a Chinese translation. China is not china, india is not India in Chinese and actually the names that we hear of people are their english names and not their original Chinese names. In fact, people choose an English name after they have learned English. that's again strange because Indians keep their Indian names and just find a spelling in English to suit that pronunciation.

well..more on the language when i figure out more... the practical application for me today was that i could not have said the name of my apartment to the cab driver as it would have a different chinese pronunciation. so it is advisable in china to have the name of your destinations written on a card that the cab driver can read. i put this knowledge to test when i came down the office bus alone while returning home. well.. it isn't so difficult... i guess...it wasn't tough today ..at least..

before taking the cab... i checked out a couple of malls with lots of electronic items.. the place is quite cool and India is yet to see such huge malls... i have just checked the rates today and couldn't assess if it was cheap or not.. maybe next time i will take some Chinese friend, if possible and then do shopping...

it is Diwali in India today..and so i decided to avoid non-veg today (which is quite tough in china) and managed to eat some rice with an aloo baingan (potato and egg-plant/brinjal) and some yogurt and salad.. the food was good... i think i am getting used to the Chinese taste really fast...

well... i have to make my itinerary for the weekend. may be i will do the Bund and the shanghai museum this weekend and also figure out flights to hong kong and check if i can afford the costs...

rest... tomorrow....

shanghai trip Day 2 - chopsticks, duck's neck and frog and peanuts...

well, the day started with having a chinese breakfast. Scared what the dishes are, staisfied myself with the corn flakes and croissants. Did try some dish but wasn't sure if it had beef or pork, so abandoned it. I have decided to eat everything except pork and beef because of purely mummy (oops..i mean religious) reasons. The lunch in the office was equally confusing and couldn't eat much beyond the sald and fruits. thankfully chinese eat a lot of fruits, so life can sail. The day went on smoothly with almost no work as my tutor remained busy the whole day..but that is not the high point of the day.

my tutor invited her entire team to a dinner to welcome me and there were some 12 people sitting in a Sichuan (probably the one refered to as Shchezwan in india..am not sure) restaurant. I was asked if i had any dietary restrcitions and i named beef and pork as banned. they were nice to order only two beef dishes and around twenty other dishes. well, before i come to the dishes, let me describe my biggest achievement of the day. Chopsticks..yeah chopsticks..the two slender sticks used by Chinese (and some other Asian cultures also) to eat the food in place of spoons and forks looks simpler but is really complicated. I had managed the lunch with forks, but wanted to learn the art of handling these sticks. one of the colleagues Harry helped me. He told me to keep one stick pressed at one end between the thumb and first finger and the other end lying over the third finger. this stick is supposed to remain still, the way our upper jaw remains still. the one that is supposed to move is the one pressed between the thumb and first finger at one end, but letting the second end move, balanced between the first and the second finger. Well it sounded complicated description of a simple task to the ladies present, but Harry had done a brilliant job of explaining it to me. in the first attempt itself, i was able to pick up a piece of chicken. people clapped.

it turned out that Harry also is a Mechanical engineer like me and maybe that's why i understood him so well. then, i just decided to have the entire meal with the chopsticks. i ate noodles and my confidence increased. then i was offered some other meat which was not chicken nor was it beef or pork (my hosts were really honest and respected my dietary constarints). i picked up a piece and put it in my mouth. it had bone in the middle and i had to use my hands to get rid of the bones. i was told that it's the neck of a duck. So, here was the second achievement of the day - Duck meat eaten. But the feats had just begun. I was again offered a meat which was none of chicken, beef, pork and not even duck. It was quite soft and yummy. after having a bite i asked what it was and the answer came - FROG. I was astonished. Did i just eat a frog? and did it taste good. well, the answers to both the questions were YES. So, the third achievement of the day - Frog eaten. then i was offered Squids (some seafood), some fish, some potato dish, century eggs (eggs preserved for 100 days). sweet rice balls, and what not. i kept munching and my hosts were happy to see me comfortably eating their dishes.

Sichuan is supposed to one of the spiciest chinese dishes and believe me, they were a little less spicy than the dal we eat in india. So i was completely comfortable. actually it was in lunch that i was not able to find taste in the food. but eating a spicy food was not the challenge, neither was the challenge in eating frogs, ducks and squids. the real challenge was not of dare but of talent. it wa sabout the skill of using the chopsticks. I was asked to pickup a peanut by the chopsticks. In case, the geometry is not clear. Chopsticks are like 6-8 inches long slender pair of sticks held between the fingers and it is easier to hold flat big stuff through them as the force applied at the other end of the sticks is too less due to its long length. peanuts are round (in case, not known), and are difficult to pick, specially when you have to pick just one. the chopstiks need to move as if two of your fingers move and claw the round nut. I made an attempt and VOILA..i picked upa a peanut. people clapped loudly. the challenge kept coming, ranging from peas, corns, rice and so on.. i kept suceeding. the final challenge was to pick up a peanut using my left hand. well, left is not a hand that i often use and can't really write or eat with my left hand. but, now it was about the pride of a mechanical engineer, about the pide of IIT and about the pride of India - the pride that we can merge any culture into us. after one faike attempt, i finally picked up the peanut with chopsticks in my left hand. the applause was accompanied with cheerful hooting and i suddenly became the attraction of the crowd.

i must say that my introduction to the chinese cuisine was both joyful and enlightening. i have several achievements for a single day - chopsticks, duck'e neck and frogs.... the journey has just begun...

shanghai trip day 1 - getting there

well... after a long wait for visa.. i am finally off to shanghai... had my tickets done from mumbai and a flight change at Kuala Lumpur. Air travel is no longer new but a business class travel was definitely new. There were way too many ways in which you could move your seat and had it not been for the explaining leaflet, i would have been sitting upright all along. There was also a personalised LCD screen with movies in almost all languages. and the best thing was there was free liquor. Well, i am not that fond of liquor, but when it's free, it's tough to resist. i was offered champagne, which i denied planning not to drink alcohol. I was sneezing with cold the other day and despite two tablets last day, the nose still ran. I finally decided to have a rum to control that. I don't know how much that helped, but it was fun to lie down with blankets on, watching an Emraan Hashmi flick on Malaysian Airlines and sipping Bacardi Rum. You literally felt off the grounds....

The LCD was so attractive that i kept watching movies the whole night and 5 hours passed like nothing... we reached KL at 7:30 am local time (5:00 am IST), and to my utter surprise, it was too cold. As I had boarded from mumbai, i had dressed myself according to a mumbai winter (which never occurs) and the airy adidas t-shirt ensured that all the air passed through it. soon the cold wind became chilling and i finally thought i would collapse if not covered. all my warm clothes were in the checked-in luggage and i was only carrying the laptop with me. my next flight was at 9:30 local time and i thought i will manage two hours somehow... Went to the executive lounge (another benefit of Business Class) but the AC was not conditioning the air to my requirements. I finally decided to buy a jacket at the airport itself. First found out the rates of the Malaysian currency (don't know what they are called, but were abbreviated as RM), compared them with indian rupee so that i am able to assess the expensiveness of the jacket. after 15 minutes of search, i finally managed to get a Nike jacket worth 2000/- indian rupees. convinced myself that this was life saver expenditure and should not be thought of as extravagance...

Nonetheless, the jacket did its work. I felt much more alive after having it. tried calling to india, but the phones didn't cooperate. finally boarded for another 5-hour flight to shanghai. the sleep that i denied in the first flight took over me in the second one. I slept like anything, so much so that when i first woke up, we were landing at shanghai. the sweet air hostess had tried to wake me up for lunch (and another free rum, maybe) but i did not budge. she came later and smilingly asked if i was hungry. i politeliy denied, keeping the dignity of a business class...

at shanghai airport, saw a guy with HUL t-shirt. said him a hi and found out that he (named Madhur) and his colleague Anubhav had also come for some work to unilever shanghai office but were going to stay in Hyatt. So, we parted post baggage collection. After a few minutes of search, i found the driver holding my name and unable to speak any word of english. the first view after the airport was impressive. long roads, elaborate highways, flyovers above flyovers.... i wanted to click them but couldn't get a good click. as the road proceeded, i was trying to recognize roadsigns, trying to map them with the ones i had read about in the travel guide. a few names did match and made me assured that i can read maps.

after an hour's drive, i reached Somerset Xu Hui, a service apartment provided to me by Unilever. the house was impressive, with two TV's (one in each room), a dvd player, refrigerator, washing machine, microwave, gas stove, and god knows what all. i settled myself down. it was a little struggle to get over the cold. It was 5 in the evening when i finally had set in. i decided to go for a stroll.

Shanghai, i tell you, is impressive. HUGE buildings, huge like really huge, broad roads, like really really broad and amazing infrastructure. You feel you are in america or something. i said to myself - this can't be china, the country ruled by the communists and the palce which is famous for fake electronics. but you have to accept. Shanghai is different. it is out of the world. if there ever would be a text book example of how a city should look like, it shall be and will be shanghai.

i figured out superstore nearby and checked out prices of rice etc. it is pretty converting everything in indian rupee to assess whether it's cheap or costly. Din't buy anything. the maggie brought from india shall do me for a week or more. may be till then, i might get used to the chinese taste. have to go to the office tomorrow. one of the office mates lives in the same building. she shall help me get there tomorrow.

hoping to blog in daily now onwards....